Post by Admin on May 26, 2015 13:55:38 GMT
Eating Disorder ~ Anorexia Nervosa; through the lens of Karen Carpenter
(This is a quiz. See how much of her life was directed and controlled by scientology tricks and mental manipulations.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Carpenter
Karen Anne Carpenter (March 2, 1950 – February 4, 1983) was an American singer and drummer. She and her brother, Richard, formed the 1970s duo Carpenters. Although her skills as a drummer earned admiration from drumming luminaries and peers, she is best known for her vocal performances.
Carpenter suffered from anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder which was little known at the time. She died at age 32 from heart failure caused by complications related to her illness. Carpenter's death led to increased visibility and awareness of eating disorders.
When Carpenter entered Downey High School, she joined the school band. Bruce Gifford, the conductor (who had previously taught her older brother) gave her the
glockenspiel,
an instrument she disliked. After admiring the performance of her friend, Frankie Chavez, she asked if she could play the drums instead. She and her brother made their first recordings in 1965 and 1966. The following year she began dieting.
Under a doctor's guidance she went on the Stillman Diet. She rigorously ate lean foods, drank eight glasses of water a day, and avoided fatty foods. She was 5' 4" (163 cm) in height and before dieting weighed 145 pounds (66 kg; 10 st 5 lb) and afterwards weighed 120 pounds (54 kg; 8 st 8 lb) until 1973, when the Carpenters' career reached its peak. By September 1975, her weight was 91 pounds (41 kg; 6 st 7 lb).
Carpenter started out as both the group's drummer and lead singer, and she originally sang all her vocals from behind the drum set. Because at 5 feet 4 inches tall it was difficult for people in the audience to see her behind her drum kit, she was eventually persuaded to stand at the microphone to sing the band's hits while another musician played the drums. (Former Disney Mouseketeer Cubby O'Brien served as the band's other drummer for many years.) After the release of Now & Then in 1973, the albums tended to have Carpenter singing more and drumming less. At this time her brother developed an addiction to Quaaludes. The Carpenters frequently cancelled tour dates, and they stopped touring altogether after their September 4, 1978, concert at the MGM Grand in
Las Vegas.
The Carpenters' Very First TV Special was Richard and Karen Carpenter's very first television special, aired December 8, 1976. In 1980, she performed a medley of standards in a duet with Ella Fitzgerald on the Carpenters' television program Music, Music, Music. In 1981 after the release of the Made in America album (which turned out to be their last), the Carpenters returned to the stage and did some tour dates, including their final live performance in Brazil.
In 1979 Richard took a year off to cure his dependency on Quaaludes, and Karen decided to make a solo album with producer Phil Ramone. Her solo work was markedly different from usual Carpenters fare, consisting of adult-oriented and disco/dance-tempo material with more sexual lyrics and the use of Karen's higher vocal register. The project met a tepid response from Richard and A&M executives in early 1980. The album was shelved by A&M CEO Herb Alpert, in spite of Quincy Jones' attempts to talk Alpert into releasing the record after some tracks had been remixed. A&M made the Carpenters pay $400,000 to cover the cost of recording Karen's unreleased solo album to be charged against the duo's future royalties.
Carpenter lived with her parents until she was 26. After the Carpenters became successful in the early 1970s, she and her brother bought two apartment buildings in Downey as a financial investment. Formerly named the "Geneva", the two complexes were renamed "Only Just Begun" and "Close to You" in honor of the duo's first smash hits. The apartment buildings are located at 8353 and 8356 (respectively) 5th Street, Downey, California. In 1976 Carpenter bought two Century City apartments, gutted them, and turned them into one condominium. Located at 2222 Avenue of the Stars, the doorbell chimed the first six notes of "We've Only Just Begun". As a housewarming gift, her mother gave her a collection of leather-bound classic works of literature. Carpenter collected Disney memorabilia, loved to play softball and baseball, and counted Petula Clark, Olivia Newton-John and Dionne Warwick among her closest friends.
Carpenter dated a number of well-known men, including Mike Curb, Tony Danza, Terry Ellis, Mark Harmon, Steve Martin and Alan Osmond. After a whirlwind romance, she married real-estate developer Thomas James Burris on August 31, 1980, in the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Burris, divorced with an 18-year-old son, was nine years her senior. A new song performed by Carpenter at the ceremony, "Because We Are in Love", was released in 1981. Burris concealed from Carpenter, who desperately wanted children, the fact that he had undergone a vasectomy. Their marriage did not survive the deceit and ended after 14 months.
"Now", recorded in April 1982, was the last song Carpenter recorded. She recorded it after a two-week intermission in her therapy with psychotherapist Steven Levenkron in New York City for her anorexia, during which she had lost a considerable amount of weight.
During her illness, in order to lose weight, she had taken thyroid replacement medication (to speed up her metabolism) and laxatives. Despite her participation in therapy, her condition continued to deteriorate and she only lost more weight, leading Carpenter to call her psychotherapist to tell him she felt dizzy and that her heart was beating irregularly. Finally in September 1982, she was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and hooked up to an intravenous drip, which caused her to gain a considerable amount of weight (30 pounds) in just eight weeks. The sudden weight gain further strained her heart, which was already weak from years of dietary restriction.
Carpenter returned to California in November 1982, determined to reinvigorate her career, finalize her divorce, and begin a new album with Richard.
On February 4, 1983, less than a month before her 33rd birthday, Carpenter suffered heart failure at her parents' home in Downey, California. She was taken to Downey Community Hospital, where she was pronounced dead 20 minutes later. The Los Angeles coroner gave the cause of death as "heartbeat irregularities brought on by chemical imbalances associated with anorexia nervosa." Under the anatomical summary, the first item was heart failure, with anorexia as second. The third finding was cachexia, which is extremely low weight and weakness and general body decline associated with chronic disease. Her divorce was scheduled to have been finalized that day.
The autopsy stated that Carpenter's death was the result of emetine cardiotoxicity due to anorexia nervosa, revealing that she had poisoned herself with ipecac syrup, an emetic often used to induce vomiting in cases of overdosing or poisoning. Carpenter's use of ipecac syrup was later disputed by Agnes and Richard, who both stated that they never found empty vials of ipecac in her apartment and have denied that there was any concrete evidence that she had been vomiting. Richard has also expressed that he believes Karen was not willing to ingest ipecac syrup because of the potential damage that both the syrup and excessive vomiting would do to her vocal cords and that she relied on laxatives alone to maintain her low body weight.
Carpenter's funeral service took place on February 8, 1983, at the Downey United Methodist Church. Dressed in a rose-colored suit, Carpenter lay in an open white casket. Over 1,000 mourners passed through to say goodbye, among them her friends Dorothy Hamill, Olivia Newton-John, Petula Clark, and Dionne Warwick. Carpenter's estranged husband Tom attended her funeral, where he took off his wedding ring and placed it inside the casket.
Carpenter's death brought lasting media attention to anorexia nervosa and also to bulimia. In the years after her death, a number of celebrities decided to go public about their eating disorders, among them actress Tracey Gold and Diana, Princess of Wales. Medical centers and hospitals began receiving increased contact from people with these, and similar disorders.[citation needed] The general public had little knowledge of anorexia nervosa and bulimia prior to Carpenter's death, making the condition difficult to identify and treat.
Her family started the Karen A. Carpenter Memorial Foundation, which raised money for research on anorexia nervosa and eating disorders. Today the name of the organization has been changed to the Carpenter Family Foundation. In addition to eating disorders, the foundation now funds the arts, entertainment and education.
(It should have stuck to concentrating on anorexia and eating disorders. "Big-Head disease" permeates almost every sector of society, instead of being extinguished as it should have been!)
Time article:
time.com/3685894/karen-carpenter-anorexia/
Carpenter’s death raised awareness of the dangers of eating disorders, which had until then been little publicized or understood. For a generation of women who saw Twiggy (made in England) as an icon of the ideal body shape, it also proved — as TIME concluded in 1989, when summing up the moral of a docudrama about Carpenter’s life — that it was, in fact, possible to be too thin.
Carpenter was the first celebrity casualty of an eating disorder, according to Randy Schmidt, the author of Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter. After her death, however, other public figures shared their own struggles with anorexia and bulimia, most notably Princess Diana.
Whether from ipecac or from malnourishment alone, Carpenter was so weak by the mid-’70s that she could do little more than lie down between shows. Her exhaustion forced the band to cancel a 1975 European tour while she slept 14 to 16 hours a day, according to Schmidt’s biography.
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The Guardian Review:
www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/24/karen-carpenter-anorexia-book-extract
In 1996 journalist Rob Hoerburger powerfully summed up Karen Carpenter's tribulations in a New York Times Magazine feature: "If anorexia has classically been defined as a young woman's struggle for control, then Karen was a prime candidate, for the two things she valued most in the world – her voice and her mother's love – were exclusively the property of her brother Richard. At least she would control the size of her own body." And control it she did. By September 1975 her weight fell to 6st 7lb (41kg).
Friends and family began to notice extreme changes in Karen's eating habits, despite her attempts at subtlety. She rearranged and pushed her food around the plate with a fork as she talked, which gave the appearance of eating. Another of her strategies involved offering samples of her food to others around the table. She would rave on about her delicious meal and then insist that everyone try it for themselves. "Here, you have some," she would say as she enthusiastically scooped heaps on to others' plates. "Would you like to taste this?" By the time dinner was over, Karen's plate was clean but she had dispersed her entire meal to everyone else. Her mother, Agnes, caught on to this ploy and began to do the same in return. "Well, this is good, too," she would say as she put more food on to her daughter's plate. This infuriated Karen, who realised she would have to find other ways to avoid eating.
By the time Karen's weight dropped to 6st 6lb, she looked for ways to disguise the weight loss, especially around those she knew would make comments or pester her to eat more. She began to layer her clothing, a strategy her agent Sherwin Bash noticed in the early part of 1975. "She would start with a long-sleeved shirt and then put a blouse over that," he explains, "and a sweater over that and a jacket over that… With all of it you had no idea of what she had become."
Karen's new slim figure required that she purchase a new stage wardrobe, and she opted for a number of low-cut silky gowns, some strapless or even backless. Bash was horrified to see her bony shoulders and ribs. Even her hip bones were visible through the thin layers of fabric. He asked Karen to rethink the wardrobe choices before going on stage. "I talked her into putting a jacket on over the bare back and bare arms," he said, "but the audience saw it."
There was often a collective gasp from the audience when Karen would take the stage. In fact, after a few shows, Bash was approached by concerned fans who knew something was terribly wrong but assumed she had cancer or some other disease. Even critics took note of her gaunt appearance. A review for Variety praised Karen's emergence from behind the drums to centre stage but commented on her deteriorating appearance.
No one really understood why Karen wasn't eating. To those around her the solution seemed simple: eat. "Anorexia nervosa was so new that I didn't even know how to pronounce it until 1980," band member John Bettis said. "From the outside the solution looks so simple. All a person has to do is eat. So we were constantly trying to shove food at Karen… My opinion about anorexia is it's an attempt to have control – something in your life you can do something about, that you can regiment. That just got out of control with her."
Unlike her parents, Bash had no qualms about confronting Karen on the issue of anorexia. "The fact that she was anorexic was discussed innumerable times… There was every attempt to get her to seek professional help, but I believe her family was the kind of family where the mother would say, 'We can take care of ourselves. We don't need to have someone help. This is a family matter.'"
When Karen dieted, or "overdieted", Bash explains, there was a rush of attention from the family, especially Agnes. "Karen had never had attention from Agnes before – her mother doted exclusively on Richard – so she liked it. The experts say that one of the things that seems to drive young girls to overdiet is that they were oftentimes the kids that never got attention. It's a way of getting the love from their family that they never got before."
By the autumn of 1975 Karen's failing health could no longer be ignored. In addition to her skeletal appearance, she was mentally and physically exhausted.
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Two months into their relationship in June 1980, thirty-nine year old Tom Burris told Karen he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. The couple's plan for a year-long engagement was ditched when they announced in July their plans for an August ceremony. The push to be married alarmed Karen's friends. According to Karen 'Itchie' Ramone, Karen's friend and the wife of producer Phil Ramone, "That's when everybody's antennas went up."
Days before the wedding rehearsal Burris dropped a bombshell: he had undergone a vasectomy prior to their meeting. Karen felt betrayed. Burris had lied to her; he had withheld this information for the duration of their courtship and engagement, knowing full well that starting a family was at the top of Karen's list of priorities. This was a deal breaker. Yet her mother said "The invitations have gone out. There are reporters and photographers coming. People magazine is going to be there. The wedding is on, and you will walk down that aisle. You made your bed, Karen," she told her. "Now you'll have to lay in it."
Most of Karen's family and friends had assumed Burris's lifestyle and net worth were comparable to her own. The expensive cars and other possessions gave him the appearance of a multimillionaire, but what others did not realise was that he was living well beyond his means.
"It wasn't long after they got married that he started asking her for money," recalls Evelyn Wallace. "He'd give her some excuse, and she'd give him the money. He'd ask for $35,000 and $50,000 at a time. Finally it got down to the point where all she had left was stocks and bonds."
He was often impatient, and she admitted being fearful when he would occasionally lose his temper. "He could be very cruel to her," says Itchie. But Karen's longing to be a mother proved to be stronger than her desire to leave her husband. At their house in Newport Beach Karen expressed to Burris her desire to get pregnant and start a family. His response was brutal. She was still crying hysterically when she called Itchie Ramone for support. Burris had told her he wouldn't even consider having children with her and called her "a bag of bones". According to Itchie, this marriage was "the straw that broke the camel's back. It was absolutely the worst thing that could have ever happened to her."
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Following a brief stop in Amsterdam, the Carpenters arrived at London's Heathrow airport on Wednesday, 21 October 1981. They made numerous promotional appearances while in London, both in person and on television. On Thursday they taped an interview for Nationwide, a popular news magazine on BBC television. Barely one minute into their visit, host Sue Lawley surprised Karen by casting light on her darkest secret. "There were rumours that you were suffering from the slimmer's disease anorexia nervosa," Lawley said. "Is that right?" "No, I was just pooped," Karen said with an intense frown. "I was tired out."
"You went down to about six stone in weight, I think, didn't you?" Lawley asked. "I have no idea what 'six stone in weight' is," Karen replied, becoming noticeably uncomfortable and increasingly agitated. She struggled to fake a laugh, rolling her eyes at the interviewer, who quickly converted the amount to approximately 84lbs. "No," she said, shaking her head adamantly. "No."
In actuality her weight was hovering around 5st 10lbs even then. The interviewer's continued efforts to pinpoint a reason for Karen's skeletal appearance prompted Richard to come to his sister's defence. "I don't really feel that we should be talking about the weight loss," he told Lawley. "Maybe it's better to take a pass on the whole thing. It's really not what we're here for."
"I am just asking you the questions people want to know the answers to," Lawley replied.
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Returning to Los Angeles in November 1981, Karen filed for divorce. Leaving behind the pieces of her broken marriage, she set out on a year-long recovery mission, relocating to New York City's Regency Hotel in January 1982. Manager Jerry Weintraub arranged for Karen and Itchie Ramone to share a two-bedroom suite. Cherry O'Neill, the eldest daughter of singer Pat Boone who had herself recovered from anorexia, had recommended Karen consider coming to the northwest and seeing the doctor who helped her. But in Karen's world, one name was synonymous with anorexia treatment, and that name was Steven Levenkron. He was a psychotherapist specialising in eating disorders and his successful book The Best Little Girl in the World had become a highly acclaimed television movie, which aired in May 1981. Levenkron agreed to treat her. He received £100 for each hour-long session five days a week, totalling $2,000 a month. "I liked Levenkron, at least in the beginning," Itchie Ramone says. "No one really knew why someone would get the disorder or how to treat it, so we were really looking to him to 'save' her."
Arriving at Levenkron's office at 16 East Seventy-Ninth in Manhattan, Karen weighed in at an alarming 5st 8lb. A week into their daily sessions, Karen admitted to Levenkron she was taking a large number of laxative tablets – 80-90 Dulcolax a night. This did not surprise Levenkron. In fact, it was a common practice for many anorexics. "For quite some time, I was taking 60 laxatives at once," admits Cherry O'Neill. "Mainly because that was how many came in the box… I would ingest the entire contents so as not to leave any evidence."
What did stun Levenkron was Karen's next casual disclosure. She was also taking thyroid medication – 10 pills a day. He was shocked, especially when she explained that she had a normal thyroid. Realising she was using the medication to speed up her metabolism, Levenkron confiscated the pills. This was the first case of thyroid medication abuse he had seen in his dozen years in the field.
According to Levenkron's 1982 book, Treating and Overcoming Anorexia Nervosa, the patient must become totally dependent upon the therapist. Once the patient has transferred their dependence on to him, he tries to teach them how to create their own sense of identity, and he helps them disengage from their dependence on him with new behaviours, habits, and thought patterns.
Levenkron explained that the family's attempts to threaten or bribe Karen out of her behaviours would never make them go away. According to his book, "Failure of the family to understand this produces division within the family that in turn results in feelings of anger and guilt. The family atmosphere is chaotic, reinforcing the anorexic's belief that she and no one else knows what is best for her." Levenkron suggested to the family that Karen was in need of a more tactile, demonstrative kind of love. Karen cried uncontrollably during the meeting. She told them how sorry she was for having put them in a situation where they felt a need to defend her upbringing, and she went so far as to apologise for ruining their lives. "I think Karen really needs to hear that you love her," Levenkron told the family.
"Well, of course I love you," Richard told her unreservedly.
"Agnes?" The therapist tapped the mother's shoe with his own.
Rather than address her daughter, Agnes explained how she preferred to be called Mrs Carpenter. "Well, I'm from the north," she continued. "And we just don't do things that way."
"Agnes couldn't do it," says Itchie Ramone, who discussed the meeting with Karen and Levenkron after the family left. "She couldn't do it… In therapy you're basically stark naked. Then your own mother can't reach out to you? And the way she doted on Richard. Most children would try to dance as fast as they could to make their parents love them, but it was at that point that I think Karen decided it was time to take a step back."
After the meeting with Levenkron, Richard became angry with the treatment plan, which he thought to be worthless. He was upset that Karen had not checked herself into an inpatient facility as one would do to conquer substance abuse. He and his parents returned to California and chose to keep their distance after this painful encounter. They made no further attempts to contact Karen's therapist. "What I find interesting," Levenkron stated in 1993, "is that in the entire time Karen was in New York, I got zero calls from the family. I have never treated anyone with anorexia nervosa whose family didn't call regularly because they were concerned." Likewise, Richard claimed to have never received a call from Levenkron.
Karen and Itchie were surprised to learn that Levenkron was not an actual doctor. "We used to call him 'Dr Levenkron' all the time," Itchie explains. "Then we found out that he wasn't even a real doctor. Any medical issues she had, we had to go see this other doctor at Lenox Hill Hospital."
According to Evelyn Wallace, "Karen picked the wrong guy to go to. He wasn't even a doctor. It seemed like Levenkron was simply trying to talk Karen out of having anorexia, but she'd talk to him and she'd go back to the same routine."
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By the autumn of 1982 Karen showed no real signs of progress. In fact, her walks to and from sessions with Levenkron kept her body weight beneath the six stone mark. Itchie Ramone called Levenkron and voiced her concerns. "Look, Karen's getting thinner and thinner," she exclaimed. "Plus, it's obvious she doesn't have her usual energy anymore. When do you expect this turnaround? She's just skin and bone."
The therapist agreed that Karen seemed extra tired and was not responding as quickly as he had hoped, and vowed to try another approach. After her next session with Levenkron, Karen asked Itchie if she could borrow a swimsuit. "What?" Itchie asked. "There's no pool in the hotel. Besides, it's cold out!"
"No, I have to wear it tomorrow for Levenkron," Karen answered. The two stopped by the Ramones's apartment to pick up a size 2 light green bikini belonging to Itchie. Karen changed into the bikini and emerged smiling. Itchie was mortified and unable to hide her reaction. "What's the matter?" Karen asked. "It fits."
"Uh, yeah, it fits," she said hesitantly. "You can use it tomorrow, I guess."
Returning to Levenkron the following day, Karen was asked to change into the bikini and stand in front of the office mirror. He urged her to survey and evaluate her body. "She didn't really see any problem with how she looked," Itchie recalls. "In fact, she thought she was gaining a little weight. But she was 79lb."
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In mid-September Karen phoned Levenkron and told him her heart was "beating funny". She was quite upset, anxious, and confused. She complained of dizziness to an extent that she was unable to walk. Despite not being medically qualified, he recognised her symptoms as those of someone suffering extreme dehydration. Karen was admitted to New York's Lenox Hill Hospital on 20 September 1982 to begin hyperalimentation, or intravenous feeding.
The next morning she went into surgery to have a small-bore catheter implanted within the superior vena cava (right atrium of the heart). An unexpected complication was discovered later that day when she complained to the nurse of excruciating chest pain, and X-rays revealed the doctors had accidentally punctured one of her lungs in their attempts to insert the tube.
As her lung began to heal, Karen's body quickly responded to the artificial means of feeding. The hyperalimentation process completely replaced all of her nutritional needs, and a precise daily calorie intake was dispensed through the catheter. This loss of control was known to often spark fear in patients, and doctors who oppose hyperalimentation argue that it does not teach the patient to eat properly. However, Karen went along with it and gained 12lb in only a few days. Solid foods were slowly reintroduced as the level of assistance from Karen's IV lessened, and she continued to gain weight steadily. Unlike many other patients she seemed pleased and excited to show visitors her progress. Richard flew in to visit on 25 October and, like most who saw her there, was shocked and saddened. She was still horribly emaciated and barely identifiable by this stage. "You see how much better I look?" she asked.
Richard nodded in agreement but only to appease his sister. In an attempt to divert the attention away from herself, Karen told him of other patients who were much worse off. But he was not sidetracked. "Karen, this is crap," he said suddenly. "Don't you understand? This is crap! You're going about this all the wrong way. This guy isn't getting anything accomplished because you're in a hospital now!"
By November Karen was eating three meals a day at Lenox Hill, and trying to stay positive about the weight gain, by then approaching the 30lb mark. The return of her menstrual cycle, which had ceased during the previous year, seemed to signify an improvement in emotional and physical wellbeing.
"She tried to get help," says her longtime friend Frenda Franklin. "She went to New York to try. It just wasn't the right way to do it. If this had happened in today's world I think Karen would have lived. I think we would have had a good shot. They know so much more. We were dancing in the dark."
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Karen ate heartily on Thanksgiving Day, much to the delight of her family, and she even called Itchie Ramone that night to tell her of all she had eaten. "She said to me, 'I ate this and that and all my favourite things,'" she recalls. "She was very proud of herself then. We were all very proud of her. It seemed like progress."
"I'm ready to record again, and Richard and I have been talking about getting the group together and performing."
Despite her high spirits, she was taking more naps than usual and sometimes lying down by seven in the evening. Richard did not believe she was well, and he told her so. On Thursday 27 January Florine Elie drove to Century City for her weekly cleaning of Karen's apartment at Century Towers. There the housekeeper made an unnerving discovery. "When I was working up there I found Karen," Elie says. "She was lying on the floor of her closet." She gently shook Karen who awoke but was groggy. "Karen, is there something wrong?" she asked.
"No, I am just so tired," she replied.
"Maybe you better go lie on your bed," she said, helping Karen up and tucking her into bed.
Florine checked on Karen again before leaving. By then she was awake and adamant she was OK.
Tuesday 1 February found Karen dining with her brother, this time at Scandia on Sunset Boulevard. They were joined by stage producer Joe Layton, and the trio discussed plans for the Carpenters' return to touring. Karen ate with enthusiasm and after dinner returned to Century Towers. This was the last time Richard would see his sister alive.
The next day Karen spoke with Itchie Ramone, who was pregnant with her and Phil's first child. Karen shared her plans for the week. She would sign the final divorce papers on Friday and then prepare to leave for New York. "That weekend, 6 February, she was going to hop on a plane and be there for the birth," Itchie recalls.
Shortly after midnight, staying overnight with her parents, Karen went over her to-do list with Frenda Franklin by phone, and finalised plans for the next day. "OK, I am going to drive in. There shouldn't be a lot of traffic," she said. According to Frenda, Karen enjoyed keeping up with traffic reports. "Then we're going to go get the red fingernail polish." The two had a noon appointment for a manicure in celebration of her divorce.
On Friday morning, 4 February, Karen awoke and went downstairs to the kitchen, where she turned on the coffeepot her mother had prepared the night before. She went back upstairs to get dressed. When the coffee was ready, Agnes dialled the upstairs bedroom phone, but its ring, heard faintly in the distance, went unanswered. Agnes went to the foot of the stairs and called to her daughter but there was no response. Entering the room, Agnes found Karen's motionless, nude body lying face down on the floor of the walk-in wardrobe. Her eyes were open but rolled back. She was lying in a straight line and did not appear to have fallen. "She had just laid down on the floor and that was it," Agnes recalled.
The autopsy report listed the cause of death as "emetine cardiotoxicity due to or as a consequence of anorexia nervosa." The finding of emetine cardiotoxicity (ipecac poisoning) revealed that Karen had poisoned herself with ipecac syrup, a well-known emetic commonly recommended to induce vomiting in cases of overdose or poisoning.
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From Wikipedia:
In 1987, movie director Todd Haynes used songs by Richard and Karen in his movie Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. In the movie Haynes portrayed the Carpenters with Barbie dolls, rather than live actors. The movie was later pulled from distribution after Richard Carpenter won a court case involving song royalties; Haynes had not obtained legal permission to use the Carpenters' recordings.
The 43-minute film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) was directed by Todd Haynes and was withdrawn from circulation in 1990, after Haynes lost a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Karen's brother and musical collaborator, Richard Carpenter. The film's title is derived from The Carpenters' 1971 hit song, "Superstar". Over the years, it has developed into a cult film and is included in Entertainment Weekly's 2003 list of top 50 cult movies.